The White Door
by Vain
Summary: Chains are not the only way to imprison a person, but what escape is there when you yourself are the warden? – Written for the 2006 Snarry Games, Team Angst


**_ The White Door  
_**- Vain  
04.10-12.2006 

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Standard Disclaimer:  
** I own nothing except the plot. Harry Potter and all the elements therein are the intellectual property / registered trademarks of JK Rowling, Scholastic Books, and Warner Brothers. The poem preceding and following the fic is an excerpt from Emily Bronte's poem _The Prisoner_. 

**Summary:** Chains are not the only way to imprison a person, but what escape is there when you yourself are the warden? -- Written for the Snarry Olympics; Team Angst

**Warnings:  SS/HP slash**, vague Book 6 S.P.O.I.L.E.R.S., mildly disturbing content, and adult themes.  
**Rated: R**  
**Length:** roughly 4,000 words

**Notes:** This fic was written for the **Snarry Olympics** for **Team Angst**; fic prompt: _Proving His Independence_.  
**1.** A "cookie cutter" house is a term used to reference a house that is a part of a group of identical houses, the logic being the house plans were all from the same design, like cookies from the same cookie cutter. Cookie cutter homes are a common feature of suburbs in the United States.

**Special Thanks** to my betas **Apapazukamori**, **Bitter Greene**, **Alice15**, & **Rakina** for beating me with Spelling, Grammar, and Diction Sticks & to the rest of Team Angst for all their help and support.

**Dedicated** with much love to Djin7.

**Plagiarism is no one's friend.**  
Enjoy!

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**_"Still, let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear  
Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;  
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,  
And offers for short life, eternal liberty._**

**_"He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,  
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.  
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,  
And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire._**

**_"Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,  
When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears.  
When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm,  
I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm."_**

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**

_I_n the eastern corner of the garden there was a white door. Though it appeared to be an ordinary wooden door that one would find at the entrance to some suburban cookie cutter house, there was an air of power about it . . . Something forbidden. It hung in midair just above the rosebushes that never bloomed, two feet off the ground, still as a motionless pendulum. And it was always closed. Harry had never been through it, but there were many places at the vineyard that Harry had never been. He was happy here. What more could he possibly want?

Sometimes, though, he would look at that impossible, perfectly white door and wonder what was on the other side.

_"You're thinking too much."_ That was what Severus would always say, a slight sneer marring his face.

Sometimes Harry thought that Severus didn't belong here. The light was too bright. The air too clear and too clean. Severus looked like he'd be more comfortable back in his dungeons. But still he had come with Harry to the vineyard.

It was completely different than the world they had both left behind. Most of Britain was shocked and scarred by the war. The land was dark and torn and gray. The vineyard was something else: something pristine.

A place to hide.

Harry had needed that after the war. He had needed to be held and comforted and protected. He had needed to _not_ be a hero. Saving the world at the age of 19 had been more than enough. Let the Ministry clean up the mess. Voldemort was dead and so he had washed his hands of the whole sordid affair.

The young man, now in his twenties, didn't remember the final battle, nor could he recall the weeks leading up to it. Most of the war, in fact, was one great big blur. The memories were red and orange. Hot and fast-paced. And somewhere, looming over the edge of the recollections and casting a black shadow, something dark stirred. Sometimes the shadows would seem to overwhelm him and then Harry would sit straight up, joints aching and gasping for breath, feeling like a loose thread torn from a loom.

Then Severus would be there, holding him, arms gentle and voice soothing and firm and gently mocking: _"Just relax. Trust me, Potter."_

During those times, the younger wizard would cling to the man like a drowning man to a life preserver.

Harry didn't want to remember the war. The nightmares that he could not recall and which overshadowed his days were memory enough. Besides, Harry had not known very much peace or tranquility in his life and the vineyard seemed to have nothing _but_ peace and tranquility. Sunny days . . . green fields . . . No cares . . .

It was truly a paradise.

On most days, it seemed that there was nothing more important that walking through the vineyard in his bare feet and feeling the rich soil beneath him and smelling the scent of the grape vines all around him. A part of him found it hard to believe that after so many days of fear and terror and bloodshed, a place like the vineyard could still exist. It all seemed like a dream at times. But then Severus was there to reassure him . . . and occasionally bring him back down to earth. The Potions Master may have written off their simple life as backwards and bohemian on a daily basis, but that did not stop him from going out to harvest fresh herbs for potions every morning at the crack of dawn or joining Harry in spending long, lazy days in repose.

Before Severus left in the morning he would always roll over and kiss Harry's cheek, murmuring an affectionate insult, and then rise and dress himself. Though his complexion would always be a bit sallow, and his nose would always be too big, and his hair was too greasy, something drew Harry to the man. He still did not know what it was. Despite their gentler surroundings or the years that had passed since Harry was his student, Snape had not softened in the least, nor was he mellowing with age. And yet Harry stayed. Not only did he stay, he craved the man's gentle contact and comforting embrace. Even in the bright sunlight of the vineyard, a chill still clung to the former Gryffindor's heart and would occasionally choke his thoughts and it was Snape whom he turned to for comfort.

Sometimes it felt odd, though--as though he were not seeing Snape properly, or only seeing a distorted view. Then Harry would stare a bit more closely at his lover, frowning, and there would be an odd moment during which the shadows that haunted the Boy Who Lived seem to condense and settle a bit more strongly over the man with whom Harry shared his life. In those moments, everything seemed ominous and Snape would look hyper-real, as though more well defined than his surroundings.

It only lasted for a few seconds, though, and was easily brushed aside. He was happy here. He wanted for nothing. And if ever he did want for something, Snape provided it for him. If not for the other man, he'd be lost.

Harry could never remember his first days in the vineyard, only that he had been here for a long time and that, for as long as he'd been here, Severus had been with him, taking care of him. After the war, Severus had always taken care of him, sheltering him. Even through the fuzzy haze of his memories, that much was clear to the young man. He needed the former Professor like . . . like most people needed the air they breathed, or clean water to quench their thirst. Severus protected him.

But Paradise can get boring after a while--especially to a young man of Harry's inquisitive temperament. He needed adventure; _craved_ it, in fact. And though the others thought him mad for wanting something more, beneath the happiness of his life at the vineyard there was always something else . . . that familiar urge . . . the question dangling over him like Eve's fruit, or perhaps the sword of Damocles. He wanted to know what was beyond that door.

_"Are you unhappy here? Then it's nothing to be concerned with."_

But Severus's explanations were not good enough. Ron told him he was mad for messing about with ancient magical artifacts. Hermione did research and couldn't come up with a single thing.

_"Harry, you **can't** just TOY with magical portals. Who knows what the previous owners were doing with something like that on the property!"_

The chastisements of his friends aside, however, the wizard's curiosity remained unsatisfied and that was never a good state for Harry Potter to be in.

But Harry was no longer a child, and adventuring was for younger folks. A stern look from his lover was all it took to remind him why they had moved to the vineyard at all: Harry Potter had more than fulfilled his duties as a hero. It was time to put away childish things.

Still, he just could not stay away. Curiosity became obsession and soon the door was all he could think of. It irked Severus to no end.

_"Am I no longer good enough for you?"_ the man had demanded in a fit of pique one day. _"Has the _Great_ Harry Potter finally surpassed his greasy old Potions Master?"_

_"You know that's not true, Severus. Stop acting like a child!"_

_"How am I supposed to act when you seem so willing to set aside all that we have for mere curiosity's sake!"_

Harry had had no response to that and he never brought up the door to his lover again. Out of sight was not out of mind, though, and if anything the altercation made him wonder all the more what lay beyond the white door . . . and also, what a life without Severus would be like. He could barely remember a time when the older man was not by his side.

It was a brilliant day when he finally made up his mind. The grapes were ripening and the news from the Daily Prophet--their only real line to the outside world--was surprisingly good for a change. Arthur Weasley had been elected Minister after months of recounts and wishy-washy judges fussing over the ballot and his friends were all coming over to celebrate. Harry was standing in the vineyards, gently grazing his fingers along the bottom of a clutch of warm, plumping grapes, lost in thought as he stared at the still-hard fruit. Ron and Hermione were over, along with their daughter Emma, and Ginny and Neville would be arriving soon, too.

From his place among the vines, Harry could see them all sitting on the veranda. Little Emma was ruining her white dress in the mud and Ron was laughing heartily as Hermione half-heartedly scolded the redheaded toddler. The bright-eyed witch was already pregnant again, although Ginny was much farther along with her first child than Hermione was with her second. Neville had been grinning like a loon for the past six months. While Harry was certainly happy for his friends, there seemed to be something odd about it. He simply could not get too emotionally involved in the odds and ends of their lives together.

Emma shrieked with laughter as her father tickled her and Harry turned away.

It was easy to get lost in the grapevines--dodging in and out of rows and moving through the nearly identical lanes--but Harry never seemed to get lost in them. When he took the first steps, he just wanted some air. But then a walk turned into a lope and a lope into an all out sprint. He was running--running away from his home and his friends--but that did not seem to disturb him. As he moved quickly through the plants, he could not help but feel as though he was running from something rather than towards something.

The edge of the gardens was not very far from the house and it only took a few moments of navigating the dense vines to find his destination. The gardens were not like any other part of the vineyard. They both fascinated and repelled Harry. He knew that this was where Severus harvested his herbs, but every time he was there, all he ever seemed to see were dead plants. If the rest of the vineyard was filled with sunlight, then it was only because all the shadows had fled to this small corner of their land. The door, however, was as pristine as ever, and so white that it seemed to shine in the drab surroundings.

For a moment, Harry stared at the thing that had haunted him for as long as he could recall, suddenly reluctant to take the last few steps. The green-eyed young man turned and looked behind him. He could see Severus still on the veranda, but now the man was apparently looking at him, something dark and indescribable in his eyes. And Ron and Hermione were watching him too now. That still seemed strange to him . . . That they should all be there together.

The handle felt oddly warm in his hand. Somehow he had not been expecting that. He could not even recall reaching for the knob in the first place. All the same, the bolt slid aside with a click as he turned the knob and the door swung open easily, slipping out of his grasp like sand sliding between his fingers. Harry frowned and squinted into the portal.

There was nothing there.

The door did not open to reveal the garden, but rather a strange, still blackness that looked oddly familiar. A wave of dÃ©jï¿½ vu swept the young man and he turned back to the small house on other side of the vineyard.

Severus was still watching him--Harry could feel the man's eyes burning into him--and so the Potter heir stalwartly turned away again to look straight forward, his eyes fixed on the empty doorframe. He felt odd: empty and meaningless and significant at the same time. Paced and rushed all at once. There should have been some sort of anxiety or trepidation, but instead he felt nothing. He never seemed to feel anything anymore.

Harry longed for something new . . . to be free.

He didn't need a paradise. And if that meant living without this peace . . . Then so be it.

The young man pulled himself up into the doorframe. There had to be more to life than this. And then he stepped through into the darkness.

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Bellatrix was startled out of a deep slumber by the familiar sound of screams. For a moment, she blinked irritably, thinking that her pet Longbottom had tried to escape again, but then she recognized the dulcet tones of Harry Potter and smiled to herself as she rose and quickly slipped on a dressing gown to cover her nudity. Sure enough, Pale--or Neville, as he used to be called--was still chained to her bed beside her, tied down and whimpering. He was a shaking, cringing thing that did his new name justice, but he still delighted her. Perhaps it was the renewed horror in his eyes every time she took him to visit his parents in Saint Mungo's. They always had such fun together. Wrecking Neville Longbottom never seemed to get old.

The Death Eater paused for a moment to lick her war trophy's chest and fondle him with deceptive tenderness. He cringed and she smiled, a deranged expression, and turned to trot off towards the sound of the screams.

The door to Snape's bedchambers was open, meaning that the man had probably not been in the room when the fit had started. Severus was already there, of course, sitting comfortably in an armchair, his wand pointed at his shrieking pet. The man had truly proven himself by slaying Dumbledore all those years ago and had been The Dark Lord's right hand ever since. Snape was favored above all others, so it only made sense that--after the their Lord laid waste to the forces of the 'Light' and razed the Ministry to the ground--Snape was given the first choice in who he chose as his pet.

How could he resist the lure of James Potter's brat--the spoiled hero who had ruined tormented and upstaged him at every turn?

That day in the ruins of the Ministry building, looking into Potter's empty, shell-shocked eyes, Bellatrix herself had been tempted to claim the whelp. That honor, however, would never be hers. Lord Voldemort needed Potter _alive_. Not only was the fallen hero Voldemort's last surviving Horcrux, he fed off the boy. Harry Potter had become the equivalent of a human rechargeable battery and Voldemort needed someone who was capable of caring for and protecting Potter with their very life.

Bellatrix knocked softly on the doorframe, sneering lightly. Strange, how Snape did not seem to mind tending to the boy now that he could fuck him. . . . Of course, Snape also chose how he cared for Potter. It was a measure of their Lord's confidence in the greasy vermin that he had given the former professor such power over something so dear to him.

Snape did not turn around and so Bellatrix knocked a bit harder, thinking perhaps that the man could not hear her for the Potter whelp's screams. The Potions Master turned and glared at the other Death Eater, his hard black eyes looking even harder. He turned back to Potter and waved his wand silently and the pet's screams abruptly cut off. The boy was still screaming, backed into a corner and shaking like an epileptic, but there was no more sound.

The dark-eyed Black sister stepped into the room almost warily, her bare feet soundless on the dungeon floor, and approached the slightly younger wizard. She ignored the shrieking young man in the corner, her attention instead focused on the wizard in front of her. "This is the seventh time in as many months, Severus. Can you not control him?"

The Potions Master sneered at the woman. "And what business is it of yours, Bellatrix, what I do with my things?" He turned back to the man who once had been Harry Potter, looking remarking unperturbed by the spectacle the brat was making of himself. "He is merely attempting to assert himself again."

"Assert himself?" Bella huffed in vexation and pulled her robes over her ample bust to ward off the chill. It was always cold in the dungeons. In fact, ever since the Dark Lord had seized Hogwarts and made the Headmistress his personal pet, the entire castle seemed cold all the time. Sometimes Bellatrix considered moving with the rest of the Death Eaters to the upper floors of the castle, but she didn't trust Snape any farther than she could throw the Giant Squid. Someone had to keep an eye on the man.

Snape turned away from his pet to the witch with a dour expression. "Yes. Assert. From the Latin '_assertus_,' the past participle of 'asserere;' in this context, meaning to compel recognition, particularly of one's rights--"

"Bastard!" the woman snarled, withdrawing slightly as though stung. "Why do you bother sugarcoating it? Your little pet is just as barking mad as the rest of them."

Severus stared at her. "Did you have something to accomplish here beyond irritating me, Bellatrix?"

She bared her teeth at him in what might have been a smile if not for the hatred glittering in her eyes. "I came to tell you to shut that miserable creature up!"

He turned his eyes back to the silently screaming young man curled up against the wall and lazily pointed his wand at him again. "_Crucio._"

Potter's head snapped back and he jerked like a marionette for a moment before Snape lifted the curse; then the boy simply fell back to the floor where he lay limp, the puppet strings cut.

The Potions Master turned back to the female Death Easter, smiling as he asked in a silky voice, "All better?"

The raven-haired witch narrowed her eyes and then turned lightly on the balls of her feet, robe swirling around her. "Have care, Severus. Not even you are immune to our Lord's wrath. And I'll be one step behind you, just waiting for to slip up."

Severus continued to smile, unaffected by her threats. They were nothing new to him. "Get out."

But Bellatrix was already gone, her robes nearly catching in the door as it slammed shut behind her.

For a moment, the man stared after her. Bellatrix was becoming bolder . . . and something of an inconvenience. If this continued, she would have to be dealt with rather . . . _severely_.

. . . He almost looked forward to it.

It had been such a long time since he'd gotten to break someone.

When Potter had come under his care almost three years ago, he immediately handed the brat over to the Death Eaters and human werewolves and Dementors and anyone else who could break the Golden Boy down. Together they had enacted every fantasy of hatred and revenge he could think of on the son of his enemy. Every pain and humiliation either Potter had put Severus through had been repaid tenfold and then repaid again and again and again. At the end of each session, it was Severus who would come and collect Potter and care for him. It was Severus who would intervene if things went too far. And eventually, it was Severus whom Potter learned to depend on. Just Severus.

Watching them break Potter down was a thrill in and of itself and it made his own work that much easier. He had known for years that Imperius would not work on the boy and so he used Legilimency, slowly and carefully pulling the stripling's mind apart strand by strand. It was painstaking work, especially when compounded with the damage the others were doing, but in the end the results were most pleasing.

It took nearly two years to crush him completely . . . Two years in which Potter slowly stopped fighting and the dark light of hatred in the boy's eyes was slowly ground down and crushed into nothingness. Now, Potter looked nothing like the wretch that had haunted Severus's childhood. His glasses were gone--what need did he have to see properly?--and his head was shaven. He had become a supple, smiling doll who followed Severus on a leash, lost in an amiable haze. It amused the Dark Lord to no end and even Severus found himself indulgent of his hapless pet that stumbled up the stairs behind him and occasionally reached out towards things that did not exist or held quiet, animated conversations with his dead friends.

Sometimes he wondered what fantasies the boy had conjured up when he had retreated into his mind to escape the horror that his life had become. What was it like there? Was he trapped behind his own myopic eyes, crying out to the world that Harry Potter still existed? Was that what these screaming fits were? His escape attempt? His chance to be free?

It didn't really matter, though. Potter would never be free--not so long as he breathed. Severus knew that he was in there with Potter, even in the boy's mind. He had made sure of that. Potter needed him now, whether in real life or only in dreams. He would never escape Severus--not ever--and that was a better revenge than any other.

James Potter must have been rolling in his grave. . . . Or at least, he would have been if Severus had not had him exhumed two years ago to use as potions' ingredients.

When Potter woke up again, he would be his normal self: smiling, affable, and obedient. And that was just fine by Severus. It had taken him a long time to get the world situated to his liking and he was no great fan of change.

He levitated the boy to the bed with his wand and settled the pet under the covers, cozy as could be. Potter did not stir.

Whatever fantasy world Potter had created for himself, it did not matter; what is true in the mind _is_ true.

"You go right on dreaming, boy." _Paradise is only what we make of it._

"_Nox._"

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In the eastern corner of the garden there was a white door. Though it appeared to be an ordinary wooden door that one would find at the entrance to some suburban cookie cutter house, there was an air of power about it . . . Something forbidden. It hung in midair just above the rosebushes that never bloomed, two feet off the ground, still as a motionless pendulum. And it was always closed. Harry had never been through it, but there were many places at the vineyard that Harry had never been. Sometimes he thought of reaching out, turning the white-gold doorknob, and stepping through that strange portal.

But then he would close his eyes and relax back into a pair of warm arms that were always waiting for him.

He was thinking too much. He just needed to let go and accept everything--everything that had happened and everything that was yet to come.

He was happy here.

Yes.

He was happy here.

And yet . . .

. . . Harry Potter continued to long for something more, something _real_. It was a small mercy, perhaps that he remained forever unaware that he would never find what he so desperately sought. Until the day he died, attempting to break his shackles would be the only freedom that he had left.

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**_"But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends;  
The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;  
Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony,  
That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me._**

**_"Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;  
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:  
Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found,  
Measuring the gulph, it stoops and dares the final bound,_**

**_"Oh! dreadful is the check--intense the agony--  
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;  
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;  
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain._**

**_"Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;  
The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;  
And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,  
If it but herald death, the vision is divine!"_**

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**_ Fin_**

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